Page 16 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“Not really?”
She smiled and said, “I don’t really remember what I’m supposed to say.”
“You’re supposed to tell me the truth.”
“Well… yeah.”
“You and Patty were teasing Bobbie about slurring her words?”
“That makes us sound awful. I guess, yeah. That’s true but it wasn’t like serious. It was just a joke.”
“She must have been slurring her words if you teased her about it.”
“It’s better for Bobbie if I say she was slurring her words, isn’t it?”
“Would you lie to me so Bobbie wins her lawsuit?”
“Oh my god, no. I’m not like that. What she said was, ‘I have to go to the bassroom.’ Like it’s a room for fish.”
I decided to switch tracks. “Did you go into the bathroom after Rob… Bobbie fell?”
“I stood outside the door. There was water on the floor.”
“Was the faucet running?”
“I don’t know. Why would that matter?”
“What else do you remember from that afternoon?”
“We were having fun. Bobbie was on. You know, cracking jokes, telling stories. Back then, she had an apartment on Crystal Lake. This dentist owned the place, like three apartments right on the water. Bobbie’s faced away from the water, which is why she could afford it at all. The two in the front were weekend rentals all summer. Anyway, she was telling stories about the tourists and how crazy some of them are. And the bugs.”
“The bugs?”
“There’s a lot of bugs out that way. Mosquitos, gnats, moths, fireflies, all that. The tourists would spray themselves with all sorts of chemicals, but Bobbie didn’t care. She just let the bugs bite, you know?”
Honestly, one of the best things about winter in Michigan was no bugs.
CHAPTER FIVE
That afternoon, it was snowing when Dorothy showed up to help. After a little bit of a chat about the baby, I got into my car and drove up M-22 to a home just above Masons Bay. Patty Gauthier had a large house on the west side of M-22, which meant that she had a small slip of land right on the water. Her house was two stories with faded wood shingles. There was a two-car garage with an apartment above it. There was so much house, I couldn’t see the water when I pulled the Metro into her paved driveway.
Each side of the driveway had a tall snowbank, and there was a mountain of snow that had been plowed up next to the garage. A woman in her early fifties with a long braid of gray hair flopping around was in front of the garage door using a snow shovel to scrape ice off the black top. She wore a tall pair of UGGS and a coat that looked like it had once been a blanket. Patty Gauthier.
Telling her who I was and what I was doing there earned me an unhappy look.
“I don’t want to talk about Bobbie.”
“Okay, that’s not really going to help her case.”
“Who said I wanted to help her case?”
“Your original statement supported what Patty said. Did she tell you what to say?”
“I plead the fifth.”
“Um, you know it’s just a civil case. Nothing’s going to happen to you if you admit to telling a little white lie.”
I had no idea if that was true, but then I guess she did because she said, “Um. Bill Clinton was impeached for committing perjury in a civil case. So… I plead the fifth.”
